


All You Had to Do Was Stay

by enbied



Category: Degrassi
Genre: /ignores eli's and zoë's presence/, Angst, Gen, M/M, POV First Person, SOSSOOSO MUCH ANGST SORRY, bitter tristan, triles, weird af miles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-10 21:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4408025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enbied/pseuds/enbied
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-14A Miles and Tris stuck as lab partners for the semester.<br/>Loosely based on that BTS photo where Miles and Tris are at the Dot and a post on tumblr featuring the words "neutral territory" which I can't find anymore :S<br/>I have a bunch more HCs for what that scene could be but I doubt I'll get them done before the episode actually airs lmao</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Neutral territory, my ass.  Pretty much everyone we know is here, probably hoping to catch an argument between me and Miles.  Miles and I.  Miles…  Slime…  Limes…  Elms...  Lies.  Hm.  I wish I’d noticed _that_ before.

After buying a coffee I score a table.  I open my binder and locate the assignment just as Miles sits down across from me.  He doesn’t say anything, just waits expectantly for me to do everything.  Of course. 

"So it says here we need to make this working model of a volcano and write a report on how the ingredients interact."

I skim through the report criteria.  It looks complicated, but I don’t want to work with Miles and I don’t want him to have the opportunity to sabotage it either. 

“I think it’ll be easiest if we do one part each;  do you want the model or the report?"

Still nothing.  I refuse to look up at him, but I know for sure he’s not stroking an imaginary beard trying to decide.

"Are you going to say anything or just sit there like a cardboard cut-out of yourself?"

"I'm sorry."  

I look up and find that Miles is staring at me.  I know what he’s _actually_ trying to say is ‘he’s sorry for everything’.  But he doesn’t know what ‘everything’ is!  He probably couldn’t even _remember_ half the shit he put me through, let alone understand why it was wrong.

Right.  If he's really sorry, why is he staring?  He should be guilty;  he should be looking away and hanging his head in shame.  No, he doesn’t even care about me.  He just wants me to forgive him so he can sleep better at night, thinking he’s even with the world. 

Yes, I’m still bitter, but I have every right to be.

"I don't care.  Report or model?"

"Tris, I can't do this."

I snarl at the nickname.  He doesn’t get to call me that.

" _You_ can’t do this?”  I scoff.  “That’s rich considering I’m the one you treated like – what was it?  Garbage?”

"You don't have to forgive me but you do have to accept my apology."

"I don't _have_ to do anything.  Answer the question.”  I barely refrain from tacking on an "asshole" to the end, then wonder why I didn’t.

"Fine.  You don't have to.  But this will be easier if you acknowledge that I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that."

"Why?"

"Because it doesn't _matter_."

“But I’m admitting I screwed up.”

“That’s the _bare minimum_ you should do when you screw up.  You don’t deserve a Nobel Peace Prize,”  I mutter.

Then he has the nerve to reach for my hand across the table!  Obviously, I jerk away faster than light. 

"Tris, I know there are a thousand things you want to say to me.  Why haven't you said anything else?"

"Because I'm done working around you and wasting my life on you."

“You think what we had was a waste?”

“We didn't _have_ anything!”  I shout, and The Dot goes quiet momentarily.  With dozens of eyes on me, I sink down in my chair and wait for them to turn back.

“Everything _I thought_ we had, was a lie.  I tried accepting your apologies.  I tried to trust you and you threw it in my face so you know what, I'll accept your apology if you just do the goddamn project.”

His hands tense around his coffee, and it’s weird, because he leans back against his chair, appearing casual instead of defeated.  Whatever.  I’ve already accepted the fact that I’ll never figure him out.

“I’ll send you the report, you make the model.  Don't fuck it up.”

I gather my things silently, fully intending those to be my last words to him for as long as possible, but when I reach the door, I turn around.

“You’re not a good person just because you said you’re sorry.”

He just looks at me the same way he did when I confronted him in the hall.  I don’t understand how he can always keep eye contact with me when I’m trying to tell him off. 

“You have to mean it.”

And I leave, as if I’m on a pointless, sadder West Drive, but I don’t get a rise out of the drama like I usually do.  I’m too thrown by whatever the hell that was.  I don’t know what it meant, why after all this time he can’t just say what’s really on his mind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which miles is all 'so anyways'

“Tristan.”

Oh, great, now he’s following me too.

“What?”  I spit, no longer caring about the onlookers on the street.

“I’m sorry.”

I stop and turn to him, incensed.

“You’ve said that a thousand times, Miles!  It’s not real to you anymore!”

“I’m.  Sorry.”  He repeats, stepping closer, seeming to think it would change something.

I shake my head sadly.  “Do you even know what you’re supposed to be sorry for?”

“Well, first there was me and Winston joking about you back in Paris.  Then there was me not taking responsibility for that.  Then I was so confused about having kissed you that I dragged Zoë around as arm candy without thinking how that would make either of you feel.  After that I –”

“You know what’s funny, is that this monologue may never end.”

I lied, obvi.  It wasn’t funny.  It was just dragging up all the old hurt.

“Can we get coffee so I can finish it?”

On the other hand, I’d kind of like to see his ego fall further and further as the list goes on.

“We literally just left a coffee shop.”

“Tris, you deserve to know the whole story.”

“And since when do you care what I deserve?”

“Always.  That’s the point.  Please, just let me tell you everything.”

 

* * *

 

“He’s a very convincing man.  For as long as I can remember I was the enemy.  I was the disappointment, for not making him proud, for causing trouble.  You know, he always did little things; he grabbed my arm when he was mad at me, stuff like that, but then after the article he started to push me and hit me.  My mom wouldn’t listen until he threw a mug at me and Hunter.”

Oh god.  Fuck, oh my god.  I knew his dad was uptight.  I knew they had a tense relationship but I never considered for a second that it was violent.  I never asked.  

“But –” he holds his hands up in front of him in that way that he does, “I don’t have to see him ever again.  Needless to say, I’ve ah, mellowed out a lot since he moved out.”

I can’t even get words out.  I want to say I’m sorry, for not trying harder to find out what he couldn’t tell me.  I want to ask if he’s okay.  But he just keeps talking as if it’s just some regular fragment of his life.

“So, anyway, since I’d smoked myself into oblivion, I thought I did still have feelings for Maya.  But it was more like… a memory of a feeling.  I knew something was off about it but I figured it was just me being a screw up, and I was just having emotions wrong.  Then that night you took the video she rejected me again and I realised I got over it way too easy.  Not like you.”

“Why couldn’t you just say you cared about both of us?”

“Because I knew whatever I said it would hurt you.  It was, ah… it was easier not to cry if I said nothing and kept my eyes up.”

“You wanted to cry?”

“… Yes.”

There’s the slightest trace of embarrassment in his simplistic response.  Ten minutes ago I would have been amused – smug, even – to have made him want to cry, to have felt like he was going to lose me no matter what, since that’s all I felt for a long time. 

But now it’s different.  Now that I know he needed me…

I pause, trailing my fingers around the circumference of my mug.

“You said you kissed me.  In Paris.”

“Well, we did kiss, didn’t we?”

“I thought it was more, ‘I kissed you and you didn’t want it’.”

“I guess I didn’t really think of it like that.”

There’s a comfortable silence.  Sad, but comfortable.

“I mean, my dad’s right, I am a bit of a screw up, but I’m working on it.  I know I made huge mistakes and that was my fault.  And I am really, genuinely sorry.”

I take a deep breath and sit up straighter.

“Well, now that everything’s out in the open, I don’t know where to… _go._  From here.”

“Maybe we can work at friends?”

“Miles… being just friends with you, watching you date my best friends, it hurt.  And, I don’t think I can go back to that.  Not after I finally got you and you screwed us over.”

“S-so you… want me out of your life?”

My voice cracks as I tell him the truth, “No.”

“What do you want?”

That’s not an accusing tone.  He’s not frustrated.  He’s having a real conversation with me and engaging and listening to me.  I knew he was a lot calmer these days but for once he’s not playing the victim card.  Hell, I think he’s… _changed_.  Excuse the cliché; I’m not in the business of forcing fairy tales on people anymore.  But he’s fighting for me and he knows what he did was still his responsibility.

God, he’s fucking asking me if I _know_ what I want.  Before I can admit it to myself, I speak.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but… I think I want you to win me back.”

He doesn’t smile.  He doesn’t even look relieved.  All I can read from him is determination and some kind of grave acceptance of the past and I think I’ve made the right decision.  I think.

“Don’t make it easy for me.”

“I won’t.”


End file.
